To install and configure MYSQL Database Support, follow these steps:
- Download and install MySQL by following the directions provided by MySQL at: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/installing.html.
- Once MySQL is installed locally, download the MySQL JDBC connector by following the directions at: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/.
Note: The JDBC connector is a JDBC driver that allows developers to create and modify database applications, including AnswerHub, in Java. - Unzip and copy the JDBC connector file (mysql-connector-java-X.X.XX-bin.jar) to the tomcat/lib directory of your Tomcat installation.
- Start MySQL from terminal with the following command:
$ mysql -u root -p -h localhost - Create your database with the following command:
CREATE DATABASE `answerhub` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci; GRANT ALL ON `answerhub`.* TO `answerhub`@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'answerhub';FLUSH PRIVILEGES;Result: A Query OK message is displayed.
Note: This command includes answerhub as the default name, but you can rename it. This command also specifies the character set and collation (the supported character and equivocation set for a database). The specified character set, utf8, will accept any character. The collation utf8_general_ci is not case-sensitive. - Each part of the code does the following:
- CREATE DATABASE `answerhub` - Creates the AnswerHub database on your MySQL server.
- CHARACTER SET utf8- Sets UTF-8 as your character set.Note: The MySQL Database must be configured to allow the UTF8 character set and utf8_general_ci collation. If you want to support unicode emoji, you may need the UTF8MB4 character set. =
- COLLATE utf8_general_ci- Sets the collation format for your character set. Note: Collation is the set of rules that determines how a database interprets a given character set. In this case, you are setting the collation to be Case Insensitive (CI), this means that characters will share the same system value no matter what case they are presented in to the system.
- GRANT ALL ON `answerhub`.* TO `answerhub`@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'answerhub' - Grants all user privileges to the answerhub user on the answerhub database created above. Note: If you want to create a different user to grant these privileges to, change the italicized answerhub text in the code block above to the preferred user name. The second answerhub.
- FLUSH PRIVILEGES- Flushes all previous permissions settings to ensure that those that were set by the code in this step take effect immediately.
Note: You can test these settings by connecting to the mysql server with the user account you created and running the use answerhub code in your console. You should get a Database changed response. The show tables code will give a Empty set result.
- Now you need to point your AnswerHub installation to the MySQL database.
Note: This is done in the config.properties file. It is located in teamhub.war/WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/config.propertiesFor example: Here is a snippet of code using config.properties for a local build:
teamhub.home=/opt/answerhub/teamhub.home # set to true if you want the install wizard to run again teamhub.forceSetup=false database.engine=mysql database.name=answerhub database.user=answerhub database.password=answerhub database.url=localhostNote: You can ignore the fields that are commented out with the pound sign (#), they are not relevant to a local installation. - The following filled out fields are important to a successful AnswerHub installation:
- teamhub.home- points to the location of the teamhub.home directory of your AnswerHub installation.
- database.engine- specifies the type of database that you’re using.
Note: In this example, the database type is MySQL. - database.name- is name of the database you created.
Note: In this example, the name of the database is answerhub. If you entered another name for your database, enter that name in this field. - database.user- is the user whose credentials will be used to access the database.
Note : Unless you are using an external database with an established set of users, you will want this user to be called root. - database.password- is the password for the database.
Note: For a local database, you will likely not have a password, depending on your settings. - database.url- is the server name that points to the database.
Note: For a local database, this will be localhost, but an external database will need the appropriate url here
- The next time you start or restart your AnswerHub site, the config.properties file will be read by AnswerHub.
Note: If you ever need to update or change your AnswerHub database, you would simply edit the config.properties to point to the updated or new database and restart your instance of AnswerHub. The first time you run your local AnswerHub build, all the necessary database tables will be automatically generated as you work through the install process - nothing needs to manually be done. The database user needs to have permissions to change the database schema.
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